The Jazz Path of Degradation

"Our Middle West is supposed to be a citadel of Americanism and righteousness. Yet a survey of its length and breadth shows that it is badly spotted with the moral smallpox known as jazz. Those moaning saxophones and the rest of the instruments with their broken jerky rhythm make a purely sensual appeal. They call out to the low and rowdy instinct.

All of us dancing teachers know this to be a fact. We have seen the effect of jazz music on our youth. The American people will never be the same as they were before they learned the disgraceful art of the shimmy and toddle. It is likely that the birth rate will be affected. The next generation will show certain physical consequences.
There will be more weaklings and fewer stalwarts. The crop of human weeds will increase. Instead of real men and women, we may reasonably expect an augmented stock of lounge lizards and second-quality vamps.

Jazz dancing is a worse evil than the saloon and scarlet vice. Abolish jazz music. Abolish the fox trot, one step, toddle, tango stock of lounge lizards and second-quality vamps or any form of dancing that permits the gentleman to walk directly in front of his partner. The road to hell is paved with Jazz steps!"

In another 1921 'The Ladies' Home Journal' magazine article, titled "Back To Pre-War Morals", the same Mr. John R. McMahon wrote:

". . . if Beethoven should return to earth and witness the doings of a jazz orchestra, he would thank heaven for his deafness.... . All this music has a droning, jerky incoherence interrupted with a spasmodic blah! blah! blah!' that reminded me of the way that live sheep are turned into mutton."

In still another 1921 issue of The Ladies' Home Journal, author Anne Shaw Faulkner asked " Does Jazz Put The Sin In Syncopation ?", and then answered herself by quoting the opinion of Dr. Henry Van Dyke, a Presbyterian clergyman and professor at Princeton University, that Jazz "is not music at all." She went on to state that ". . . jazz originally was the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, stimulating the half-crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds."